Jazz has experienced a meaningful resurgence in popularity over the past 15 years or so, especially among younger listeners. What’s driving that? You could make the case that there is a particular hunger, now that so much of life is lived in the digital cloud, for the messy and untamed energy of jazz, and for its way of putting a live process on display. And if that’s the case, then it makes a lot of sense that Chicago jazz has been at the forefront of this recent surge. Chicago has always represented a particularly rootsy, physical and — yes — windy ideal in jazz. So perhaps it’s an especially heady antidote to that sense of digital disappearance.
The Chicago jazz sound amounts to a sum of the city’s Black histories: In it you can usually hear something of the snowy, clamoring traffic in Richard Wright’s “Native Son,” from 1940; the yowl of Howlin’ Wolf’s electric guitar in a 1950s blues bar; the drummers and dancers pounding out rhythms at one of Kelan Philip Cohran’s gatherings at the 63rd Street Beach in the late 1960s; even the antiracist street protests of the 1990s.
The Windy City was an important musical outpost from the start of the recorded era, when many blues and jazz musicians moved there from the South and became stars. It’s also known as a cradle of the avant-garde, thanks to institutions like Sun Ra’s Arkestra, established there in the early 1950s, and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a seed-sowing collective that celebrates its 60th anniversary this spring. Today, the city remains at the forefront of contemporary jazz thanks to artists like Nicole Mitchell, Kahil El’Zabar, Makaya McCraven, Tomeka Reid, Jeff Parker and Isaiah Collier, each a latter-day A.A.C.M. affiliate who has springboarded into a leading role on the international jazz circuit. And the label International Anthem, founded 12 years ago in Chicago, has become one of the biggest success stories in the indie-jazz business.
We asked writers, musicians and other linchpins of the Chicago scene to tell us what tracks they would play to make a newcomer fall in love with the distinctive but multifaceted sound of Chicago jazz. Read on, listen to their picks in our playlists, and if you have favorites of your own, drop them in the comments.
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Ernest Khabeer Dawkins’ New Horizons Ensemble, ‘Mean Ameen’
Dee Alexander, vocalist
Ernest Khabeer Dawkins leading the New Horizons Ensemble. Jacob Blickenstaff for The New York Times
This recording, featuring some of the stalwarts of Chicago’s improvised music scene, should tantalize the palate of any listener new to creative music. The music is exploratory, while at the same time being funky and accessible. This Ernest Dawkins composition is a homage to Chicago’s own Ameen Muhammad, who died in 2003 at 48. Muhammad, a dear friend of Dawkins, was not only a renowned trumpeter and composer but also a highly admired and respected educator; “Mean Ameen” gained international notoriety over the course of his brief career. Ernest Khabeer Dawkins is one of those rare individuals who manages to balance a passion for community, mentorship and art. For me, this piece represents the saxophonist and bandleader at his best, through a beautiful dedication to a dear friend.
Von FreemanCredit...kpa/United Archives, via Getty Images
In jazz, Chicago always has been a nurturer of fabulous eccentrics — musicians well-aware of what their coastal colleagues are playing but fearlessly going their own way. Few soloists epitomize this fiercely idiosyncratic approach more persuasively than the tenor saxophonist Von Freeman. Listen to the great “Vonski” (a classic Chicago sobriquet) tear through Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie’s “Anthropology,” and you’ll hear a singular, steeped-in-Chicago account of a bebop-era classic. Yes, Freeman takes the bat-out-of-hell tempo you’d expect. But the brawn, heft and swagger of his playing embody what Chicago tenordom is all about. Then there’s that keening Freeman tone — acidic, penetrating, utterly unsentimental — distinguishing this recording, and Freeman’s playing, from anyone else’s. Add to that Freeman’s high-register cries, searing blues riffs, abrupt silences and sporadic melodic digressions, and you have a deeply personal “Anthropology.” Freeman’s explosive rhythmic drive and propulsive sense of swing represent a take-no-prisoners Chicago aesthetic. It’s reinforced by Freeman’s Chicago partners: Jodie Christian generating relentless energy on piano, and the drummer Wilbur Campbell and bassist Eddie de Haas constantly pushing the beat, egging Freeman on. That’s my kind of jazz.
Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy, ‘The Great Pretender’
Roscoe Mitchell, saxophonist and A.A.C.M. co-founder
With Lester Bowie, there were no holds barred on the music that you wanted to play. If you want to restrict yourself to a certain kind of music, you can do that, but you can also be flexible. Lester was flexible — and he was an amazing thinker. I met him at one of the A.A.C.M.’s rehearsals at the Abraham Lincoln Center, on Oakwood Boulevard in Chicago, where they opened up the doors to us, gave us places to have our rehearsals and let us have access to their concert hall. Lester came down with his trumpet to one of the Experimental Band rehearsals, around the time I was getting ready to record “Sound.” I took to him immediately. He was inspired, like I was. He always had great ideas. That’s the first thing.
When the members of the A.A.C.M. decided we wanted to go to Paris, it was Lester’s idea to take an ad out in The Chicago Defender saying: “Musician sells out!” What he was saying was, he was selling all his belongings, to take the band to Europe. When we went to Paris, eventually we started to get some concerts and got our own place. And the rest is history.
